Adding a second drive ubuntu 10.04 and another distro

i'll answer 3 and 4; i honestly don't know about the others.
3 = try fedora or mint. debian is a bit slower than Ubuntu updating wise. and the same as Ubuntu but not as pretty. fedora if you want security and a change. mint if you want a even easier Ubuntu & win experience.

4 = the 10.10 beta is already out

i'll answer 3 and 4; i honestly don't know about the others.
3 = try fedora or mint. debian is a bit slower than Ubuntu updating wise. and the same as Ubuntu but not as pretty. fedora if you want security and a change. mint if you want a even easier Ubuntu & win experience.

4 = the 10.10 beta is already out

Thank you Richard - I tried fedora on a pendrive and I was not impressed - ubuntu is so much more robust. I think I will try linux Mint next on a pendrive to see how it works.... Yes 10.10 is out in beta, but I rather wait until it is released ALPHA to install

I have been up and down the path you intend to tread. Consider my comments as to a degree tainted by frustration and disillusion with 10.4. Prefacing all the comments - I first encountered Ubuntu somewhere in the 8.x iteration. From there I upgraded successfully to the 9.x releases, learning as I went. Until I 'upgraded' to 10.04 upgrades were painless and improving on what I had done. The upgrade to 10.04 was an unmitigated disaster! I lost all the work I had previously completed in predecessor releases - and have yet to go through the agony of redoing them all. I have multiple issues with the 10.04 release that are not relevant in this discussion; just know that I am disgruntled as you read my comments.

First, the system that I have used over time to run Ubuntu has two removable drives configured to be the primary and secondary SATA drives. When the 10.04 release trashed the installation on that drive I removed it and set it aside. I then purchased a new 1TB SATA drive that I attempted to install 10.04 on. After multiple installations in which grub refused to load the new OS, I resorted to the live CD and went through the grub repair process that is documented in the user community. Finally, I was able to boot to the hard drive.

Once on Ubuntu I did a little fine tuning before using GParted to partition the disk. I opted to create both Linux and Windows partitions. One primary each for W7 and 10.04 - and a third Linux primary for future experimentation. The balance I made an extended partition and then created two unique storage partitions each for ext4 and ntfs.

With that configuration set up I loaded Windows 7 on the ntfs partition and rebooted. W7 launched clean - except there was no reference (of any kind) to Ubuntu. Fortunately, I remembered that I had been required to dance on a pin head to get 10.04 to load - and followed the same process - and managed to create a loader that now allows me to load either Ubuntu or W7.

I have omitted the multiple iterations I went through to reach the solution that I have in place now. I can not urge you in strong enough terms to not trash your current drive - work with the new drive and that alone until you have a configuration that you can work with and are satisfied will meet your need(s). If you have the fortitude and dexterity to add removable drives to your system it is worth the effort - I have over time installed Thermaltake (sp?) devices to my systems and am happy with the price - performance I have experienced.

Another thought - consider using BIOS to point to the new drive as first hard drive - and if possible disable your current drive if you opt not to install a removable.

I know that when 10.10 is released I will not immediately upgrade. When I do, my plan is to clone my current drive to another 1TB disk - then remove the original and attempt the upgrade on the second drive. Once burnt - ever hate fire, eh?

       Ben

Thank you Ben - I plan to image my primary hard drive using Clonezilla onto a portable HDD before I try anything. Believe it or not I have already had my trails and tribulations, I tried installing Ubuntu Netbook on my netbook and it would not boot I had to perform a uninstall. Then I tried to create a partition using gparted on the same netbook and I lost everything on the hard drive – but I had a clone image on a portable HDD but I still had to go through the hassle of going through a recovery in order to even re-start the machine.

Clonezilla Live CD has saved my info twice already I live by it, I clone all of my HDDs once a week….
Now I feel a little shell shocked on even trying to set up a dual boot machine… maybe I should just wait until I come across a used laptop with at least 40GB and dual boot Ubuntu and Mint. Less headaches and more PCs to play with… We are a family of 4 (two daughters) and we have 2 macs, a pc and the netbook + the girls have two old desk tops running Ubuntu only – they love it and viruses are not an issue… Thanks to Linux. Conclusion 6 machines… I love it…

If you have the time, take a look at this article, I am wondering if this will really work.

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/113945

Seems logical and pretty safe.

PS, I tried VMware player running a virtual OS and I did not like it at all… I rather use the Pendrive Linux website and load a generic version of the OS on a USB, it’s a much better option than a VM.

I will try to answer to question 1 and 2

1) Once you learn the partition manager of Ubuntu installer, is easy to create the partitions directly during installation. Otherwise, you have to keep in mind that you need one partition ext3 or ext4 for the filesystem (mount point /). You need also a swap file, I use to put it on a different partition with the same size of the RAM available on the PC. Alternatively, you can use LVM but I'm not an expert because I don't use it.
I have two operating systems on my PC and three hard drives. I partitioned the first one for Windows XP and Ubuntu (1 NTFS, 1 ext3, 1 swap). I have then created a FAT32 partition in the second hardisk and put all my data on it. The third drive is "workarea"...
2) Ubuntu will install grub-pc bootloader. During the configuration of grub-pc it will automatically detect all the operating systems installed on your pc and will let you decide during boot which operating system to boot. Unfortunately, I don't have experience with 3 operating systems running tugether.
I hope this can help you
Regards